Seraglio
by Janet Wallach
List Price: $26.00
Pages: 275
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0385490461
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Janet Wallach is the author of Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell and Chanel: Her Style and Her Life. She is also coauthor, with her husband, John Wallach, of three books on the Middle East: The New Palestinians, Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder, and Still Small Voices: The Real Heroes of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. A frequent contributor to the Washington Post Magazine and other periodicals, she lives in New York City and Washington.
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A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
I began this book as a biography of Aimée du Buc de Rivery, the eighteenth-century girl from Martinique, cousin of the Empress Josephine, who was seized by pirates and sent to the sultan's harem in Istanbul. There, at Topkapi Palace, she became the wife of one Turkish sultan and the mother of another. Her rise from lowly slave to valide sultan and her influence over her son, Sultan Mahmud II, one of the great reformers of the Ottoman Empire who turned Turkey toward the West, have intrigued generations of writers and scholars.
Yet the story has always been controversial. Was Aimée, in fact, the same person as the harem woman called Nakshidil? If so, when did she arrive in Istanbul, what was her relationship with Selim, and was she the real mother of Mahmud? I researched the subject for several years, visiting Topkapi and the impressive turbe where she is buried, and solicited the help of Ottoman scholars who combed the Topkapi Palace archives. Eventually, I had to concede that little specific information exists about Aimée/Nakshidil or, for that matter, any of the women in the Ottoman sultans' harems. No journals or diaries were permitted inside the imperial harems, no contact was allowed with the world outside; the women's pasts were deliberately erased, their futures defined by their rulers.
It was Father Chrysostome, the Jesuit priest, who told of the last rites given to Nakshidil on her deathbed. That the sultan's mother was born a Christian was not unusual; it was her wish to die as a Christian, and her son's acceptance of it, that set her apart. It was harder to prove that she was the missing daughter of the Martinique plantation family du Buc de Rivery, yet many students of Turkish history believe it to be true. And when Sultan Abdul Aziz journeyed to France in 1867, he was greeted with great enthusiasm by Napoleon III, who told the press that their grandmothers were related. What's more, the sultan brought with him a miniature of Nakshidil that had a likeness to an earlier portrait of Aimée. And while in France, Abdul Aziz sent out word that he was looking for members of Nakshidil's family.
This book will not end the debate over the origins of Valide Sultan Nakshidil. But I hope it will provide a glimpse of her mysterious life in the seraglio two centuries ago. Perhaps, too, it will shed some light on the Muslim world today, whether it is a handful of rulers ensnared in plots for power and succession or the millions of women who still live cloaked behind the veil.
From the Journal de France, July 10, 1867
Sultan Abdul Aziz arrived in Paris this week for a state visit. As the first Ottoman emperor to visit France, he was given a warm welcome by the government, which provided him with a huge suite at the Elysée Palace and a staff to assist his own vast retinue of servants. Among the sultan's wishes were hardboiled eggs at breakfast, napoleon pastries at lunch, chocolates in the evening, and private performances in his suite by the girls from the Folies Bergères. When asked why he had invited Sultan Abdul Azis to Paris, Emperor Louis Napoleon replied he was most curious to meet Sultan Abdul Azis because "we are related through our grandmothers."
Excerpted from Seraglio © Copyright 2012 by Janet Wallach. Reprinted with permission by Nan A. Talese. All rights reserved.
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